The first class Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick runs boat trips out to the Bass Rock, a plug of basalt rising 350 feet out of the Firth of Forth. The extraordinary sight of a dense cloud of gannets streaming to leeward off the Bass never fails to draw gasps from boat-borne visitors…

Once ashore and trudging up the zigzag path to the summit, a rhythmical sound like the surging of a giant kettle on the boil begins to make itself heard. By the time you reach the viewing place near the summit it has swelled to a roar. The smell of the colony hits you next, a stench that makes you gag. Then the spectacle claims your attention. Gannets are big – 3 feet long, with a wingspan nearly twice that – and they are beautiful, with china-white body and inner wings, long pointed black wingtips, and a buff-coloured head from which protrudes that sharp grey beak. The eyes are a remarkable cold blue.

Extract from Best Wild Places, Christopher Somerville

Letterboxing near Edinburgh

Take  a mystery walk and leave your own treasure when you find the box.

Click on the link for details.....

The first class Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick runs boat trips out to the Bass Rock, a plug of basalt rising 350 feet out of the Firth of Forth. The extraordinary sight of a dense cloud of gannets streaming to leeward off the Bass never fails to draw gasps from boat-borne visitors…

Extract from Best Wild Places, Christopher Somerville

There are no boats to Cramond Island you have to walk there from the south shore of the Firth of Forth along a tidal causeway that crosses gleaming mud and ribbed sandbanks, a crunchy carpet of mussels and winkles underfoot. The island is thickly coated with soft grass and wild flowers and possessed of magnificent views across the firth…… Once you have passed through the island’s grove of willows and sycamores, traversed the rocky knoll of the summit and dropped down to the north shore, you discover just how thoroughly these islets of the Forth were fortified during the world wars of the twentieth century. Here are concrete pillboxes, observation bunkers. Gun emplacements and searchlight bases. A couple of miles up the firth the great red dinosaur humps of the Forth Railway Bridge rise over the trees, with the naval dockyard of Rosyth in their shadow – prime targets for the German bombers.

Extract from Best Wild Places by Christopher Somerville

Regular organised bike rides around Edinburgh.
Usually starting from the Commonwealth Pool

Click on link for further details

Arthur's Seat - Woodcut by Naomi Hare (link to Naomi' s site below)

Arthur’s Secrets

Free guided walk up Arthur’s Seat.

Wednesdays 1pm. 0131 652 8150